Tag Archives: rights

Bullying

Posted on by
Reply

You can’t wear the clothes you can afford to buy, that are good quality, and that look nice without being ostentatious (you can’t wear your ostentatious rags, either, come to that).  That’s bullying, don’t you know.

That’s the attitude of the Church of England’s Woodchurch High School in northwestern England (it’s across the Mersey from Liverpool—yes, that Mersey).  They’re pretending to “poverty proof” their school, so they sent a letter to their students’ significant overseers (the institution actually refered to “parents/carers”:

As you are all aware from an email that was sent out yesterday, pupils will not be permitted to bring in Canadian (sic) Goose and Monclair (sic) coats after the Christmas break.

In the name of anti-bullying, then, this school’s management is going to bully a different group of kids.  Because clothes make the child, not what he’s taught about character.

Their hypocrisy stinks.

Asylum

Posted on by
Reply

Folks from the “caravan” have begun arriving in the Mexican border town of Tijuana preparatory to their effort to enter the US and ask for asylum.

These folks, claiming to flee government persecution and/or criminal assaults (which isn’t an asylum criterion, anyway), in their home countries, succeeded in escaping those things when they succeeded in entering Mexico—especially with Mexico having offered them asylum (and job opportunities) after that entry.

Now they need to say what they fear about their Mexican hosts that drives their need to flee Mexico and get asylum in the US. Since they haven’t experienced any of that in Mexico, and they have rejected Mexican asylum from their home countries, they should be denied entry into the US and those that do make it in need to be denied asylum here—their requests can only be shams.

Schism?

Posted on by
Reply

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops met last week to consider, among other things, two important mutual accountability proposals that would begin to address the Catholic Church’s history of child molestation by members of the Catholic priesthood—some of whom have gone on to rise in the ranks of Church hierarchy.  The proposals also were simple enough: one simply applied a zero-tolerance policy for sex abuse, and the other would have created an independent review board to investigate claims against bishops and refer credible cases directly to the Vatican.  (I’ll elide the latter’s being a matter of having the weasel rule on alleged violations of the hen house.)

Then Pope Francis told them to sit down and shut up.  Which they meekly did, without action on those proposals.

What to make of these bishops’ timidity? One conclusion is that fealty to a Church prince is more important than protecting our children.

Here’s Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of the San Francisco Archdiocese on the matter:

We’ve heard how important it is to listen to our people.

Sure. But what’s the value of “listening” if you won’t act on their concerns?  Or better, knowing these things are happening, act on your own initiative, not needing to have the concerns of the parents surfaced first as though if they don’t speak up, there’s no problem?

How will we discriminate your “listening” from your simply hearing a noisily empty cacophony?

Do we need an American Catholicism separate from the Vatican’s Catholicism, loosely (perhaps very loosely) analogous to the Church of England’s separation from the Vatican? One that keeps (most of) the foundational tenets of Catholicism, but that also holds the safety of children sacred?

After all, the Church of England was born of a concern for children, too, albeit from a different direction.

Bodies

Posted on by
Reply

Matthew Hennessey, of The Wall Street Journal, had some thoughts on this, as it pertains, I suppose, to (groups of?) people.

One of the most vexing recent developments in the world of words is the tendency to refer to human beings as “bodies.”

I’ve picked out a couple for comment.

California Progressive-Democratic Party Senator Kamala Harris, during the Brett Kavanaugh attempted lynching confirmation hearing, asked the good judge,

Can you think of any laws that give the government the power to make decisions about the male body?

Just to pick out one body of examples, we have a variety of criminal laws that lock up the male body and restrict its avenue of motion and its state of being.

And

The country has done a lot of soul searching over the years about what to call members of minority groups.

All along there has been the obvious term for such folks: Americans.

May’s Brexit Surrender

Posted on by
1

The terms include these, via Deutsche Welle:

  • The rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU will be protected
  • EU citizens living in the UK can be joined by close family members…who live in a different country at any point in the future.
  • Workers and self-employed people will be broadly guaranteed the same rights they currently enjoy

All of which negate one of the motives for leaving the European Union. EU citizens resident in the UK will be magnets for drawing in others for the UK’s generous welfare system—and EU citizens still will be able to seek work in the UK preferentially, availing themselves both of the UK’s higher wage rates and that welfare system.

  • There will be a 21-month transition period ending December 31, 2020
  • EU rules would continue to apply in the UK subject to the terms set out in the Brexit agreement
  • After the transition period, a joint committee co-chaired by the EU and the UK would police the final withdrawal agreement, taking decisions by mutual consent and whose verdicts would be binding

Meaning that the UK would remain unable to enter into separate, independent trade agreements during this “transition” period EU laws would remain in effect inside allegedly sovereign Great Britain, and the EU will retain veto power, via that mutual consent requirement, on post-transition moves—including those independent trade agreements and moves to supplant EU laws with domestic, UK, laws.

  • If appropriate customs arrangements are not agreed to, a backstop arrangement would kick in. A joint “single customs territory” between the EU and UK would apply from the end of the transition period…
  • Under the backstop arrangement, the UK must observe “level playing field” commitments on competition, state aid, taxes and employment and environment standards

Are not agreed to means the agreement will be in accordance with EU diktat or there will be the backstop arrangement. This is what the EU wants, so there will be no agreed customs arrangement.  The EU wants the backstop because those terms require the UK to keep its Northern Ireland inside the EU’s competition, state aid, taxes and employment, and environment laws in perpetuity. This is the beginning of prising Northern Ireland out of the UK—the beginning of dismantling the UK.  This is part of the EU’s demonstration to restive members of the EU and a warning of their fate if they become impertinent, too.

The bottom line for the UK here is that, under this “agreement,” these terms of surrender, the nation will become a speechless, toothless satrap of the EU, and its dismantling will be begun.

May, with her abject surrender to Brussels, has betrayed her nation’s referendum.  And she has betrayed other members of the EU similarly dismayed with Brussels’ interference in their domestic affairs.

It’s no wonder that members of her Cabinet are resigning in droves, her coalition government is falling apart, and her own party is in (sub rosa, for now) revolt.